Durendal

“ Not so; but I will deal these heathen some mighty blows with Durendal my sword. They have been ill-advised to venture into these passes. I swear that they are condemned to death, one and all."
After a while, Oliver said again, "Friend Roland sound your horn of ivory. Then will the King returns and bring his army with him, to our help." ”

“ Never has any one possessed you that would fly before another. So long as I live, you shall not be taken from me, so long have you been in the hands of a loyal knight."
Then he smote a second time with the sword, this time upon the marble steps. Loud rang the steel, but neither brake nor splintered. Then Roland began to bemoan himself. "O my good Durendal," he said, "how bright and clear thou art, shining as shines the sun! Well I mind me of the day when a voice that seemed to come from heaven bade King Charles give thee to a valiant captain; and forthwith the good King girded it on my side. ”

“ Seeing the dreaded warrior unconscious, this coward seizes his sword, loudly proclaiming he has triumphed; but, at his first touch, Roland—recovering his senses—deals him so mighty a blow with his horn, that the Saracen falls with crushed helmet and skull. Having thus recovered his beloved Durendal, Roland, to prevent its again falling into the enemy's hands, vainly tries to break it by hewing at the rocks around him, but, although he uses all the strength he has left to deal blows that cut through the stone, the good sword remains undinted. ”

“ Then the Franks kneeled on the ground while the archbishop shrived them clean and blessed them in the name of God. And after that he bade them rise, and, for penance, go scourge the pagans.
Roland ranged his trusty warriors and went to and fro among them riding upon his battle-horse Veillantif; by his side his good sword Durendal. Small need had he to exhort them in extremity; there was not a man but loved him unto death and cheerfully would follow where he led. He looked upon the pagan host, and his countenance waxed fierce and terrible ”

“ Then said Roland to Turpin, "I am on horseback and you are on foot. But let us keep together; never will I leave you; we two will stand against these heathen dogs. They have not, I warrant, among them such a sword as Durendal." "Good," answered the Archbishop. "Shame to the man who does not smite his hardest. And though this be our last battle, I know well that King Charles will take ample vengeance for us."
When the heathen saw these two stand together they fell back in fear and hurled at them spears and darts and javelins without number. Roland's shield they broke and his hauberk ”

“ From both his ears the brain is oozing fast. For all his peers he prays that God may call Their souls to Him; to the Angel Gabriel He recommends his spirit. In one hand He takes the olifant, that no reproach May rest upon him; in the other grasps Durendal, his good sword. Forward he goes, Far as an arblast sends a shaft, across A new-tilled ground and toward the land of Spain. Upon a hill, beneath two lofty trees, Four terraces of marble spread:—he falls Prone fainting on the green, for death draws near. Aoi. CLXXI.
High are the mounts, and lofty are the trees. ”

“ A lurking Saracen, who had feigned death, stole from his covert, [Pg 152] and, calling aloud, “Charles’s nephew is vanquished! I will bear his sword back to Arabia,” seized Durendala as it lay in Roland’s dying clasp. The attempt roused Roland, and he opened his eyes, saying, “Thou art not of us,” then struck such a blow with Olifant on the helm of the heathen thief that he fell dead before his intended victim.
He Tries to Break his Sword
Pale, bleeding, dying, Roland struggled to his feet, bent on saving his good blade from the defilement of heathen hands. ”

“ With Durnief, it was a struggle for life, liberty, and everything that he possessed, and he fought with all the desperation of a madman. With me, it was life, and the woman I loved, and I fought coolly, knowing that he could not get away from me, believing that I could tire him out, and satisfied that I could prevent him from securing his sword again. ”

“ The number of converts increasing, he thought that he might now act more openly: he accordingly sent to England for a bishop and priests to become the harbingers of the new faith throughout Norway. On their arrival, he destroyed some of the heathen temples in Drontheim and the neighbouring districts. Many of the pagans showed a philosophical indifference to both religions: some, south of Drontheim, would do what the people of that city should do themselves; the majority were anxious to be guided by the decrees of a Thing. An assembly was therefore convoked in Drontheim ”

“ Ah! sacred Durandal, in thy golden guard how many precious relics are enshrined!—a tooth of S. Peter, the blood of S. Basil, some hair of S. Denis, a portion of Our Lady's robe—and shall ever any pagan possess thee? A brave man and a Christian has alone the right to use thee."
Even as he utters these words, [Pg 497] death is stealing over him, until it reaches his heart. He stretches himself at length upon the green grass, laying under him his sword and his dear olifant ”

“ It was not the mere personal disappointment which weighed upon Durrance's spirit. But he could not see with Ethne's eyes, and as his gaze took in that quiet corner of Donegal, he was filled with a great sadness lest all her life should be passed in this seclusion, her grave dug in the end under the wall of the tiny church, and her memory linger only in a few white cottages scattered over the moorland, and for a very little while. He was recalled by the pressure of Dermod's hand upon his elbow. ”

“ You will find him a broken man. The estates are let, and Ethne is now living with her father in a little mountain village in Donegal."
Mrs. Adair had not looked at Durrance while she spoke. She kept her eyes fixed steadily in front of her, and indeed she spoke without feeling on one side or the other, but rather like a person constraining herself to speech because speech was a necessity. Nor did she turn to look at Durrance when she had done.
"So she has lost everything?" said Durrance.
"She still has a home in Donegal," returned Mrs. Adair. ”

“ One knows Durrance. Give him a camp-fire in the desert, and a couple of sheiks to sit round it with him, and he'll buck to them for a month and never feel bored at the end. While here there are letters, and there's an office, and there's a desk in the office and everything he loathes and can't do with. You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though he won't hurry about it. ”

“ Girls refused men for all sorts of queer reasons which had no sense in them, and very often they were sick and sorry about it afterwards; and very often they meant to accept the men all the time.
"I must answer the letters from Ireland," said Durrance, when he had finished. "The rest can wait."
Calder held a sheet of paper upon the desk and told Durrance when he was writing on a slant and when he was writing on the blotting-pad; and in this way Durrance wrote to tell Ethne that a sunstroke had deprived him of his sight. Calder took that letter away. ”

“ With the passage of every minute he realised more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance. A man not very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always the inheritor of the other places,—how much more it meant to him than to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as clearly? It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa; the sunlight blazed upon desert and river; not a breath of wind stirred the foliage of any bush. Calder drank his brandy-and-soda, and slowly that question forced itself more and more into the front of his mind. ”

“ A few rare references made in unusual moments of confidence by Durrance had only informed Calder of her name, and assured him that his friend would be very glad to change it if he could. He looked at Durrance—a man so trained to vigour and activity that his very sunburn seemed an essential quality rather than an accident of the country in which he lived; a man, too, who came to the wild, uncitied places of the world with the joy of one who comes into an inheritance; a man to whom these desolate tracts were home, and the fireside and the hedged fields and made roads merely the other places ”

“ At last they go. “Come out now,” sings out one of the orderlies, looking skywards and as if singing a snatch of a music-hall song from sheer light-heartedness. The trio unbolt the plank door and, slipping quickly to the top of the steps, stand just inside the orderlies’ door, precisely as they had stood in the morning with the day’s work in front of them; and an orderly waiting for a moment at the bottom of the steps fastens the secret door. The orderly standing at the entrance looks down the enclosure to make sure that no Germans are about, and then says “Right.” ”

“ We just imagined we saw Norden and Colby standing on the rug—or perhaps it was through Dureen's influence.
The nameless dimension was the habitat of these shadow-beings. The abyss, and the bridge upon which the two stood, were illusions created by Dureen. When that which Dureen had planned was complete, our minds would be probed, and our memories treated so that we recalled no more than Dureen wished us to remember. ”

“ Then I related in detail the story of my struggle with Durnief, the rescue of Zara, her heroism in assisting me, and I told of the final capture and imprisonment of the captain. But his majesty shook his head in a doubt.
"I believe Durnief's letter. She is a nihilist," he said. "She must be arrested." I shook my head, but he did not see the motion and continued: "I believe that the princess is the friend to whom poor Michael referred. He was in love with her and nothing short of the love of a woman could have made him disloyal to me. Yes, I believe that she is what Durnief says she is. ”

“ Durnford called occasionally in Soho Square to satisfy Lavendale, who was now at his house in Bloomsbury, living in the seclusion of a hermit, although the town with all its pleasures was at his elbow. He looked very ill, and was the victim of an abiding melancholy which moved his friend to deepest compassion. To oblige him, Durnford left his quiet lodging by Russell Street, and took up his quarters in Bloomsbury Square, where he had a whole suite of rooms to himself, and where he was able to keep an eye upon his friend, whose condition filled him with alarm. ”

“ Durrance had lost everything which made life to him worth living the moment he went blind—everything, except one thing. "What should I do if I were crippled?" he had said to Harry Feversham on the morning when for the last time they had ridden together in the Row. "A clever man might put up with it. But what should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my days?" Ethne had not heard the words, but she understood the man well enough without them. ”

“ Durrance did not understand what she was after. Possibly no one could have understood unless he was aware of what had passed between Harry Feversham and Ethne. Durrance wore the likeness of a man, and she was anxious to make sure that the spirit of a man informed it. He was a dark lantern to her. There might be a flame burning within, or there might be mere vacancy and darkness. ”

“ Before we had been twenty-four hours out from Drontheim, there was a marked change in the appearance of the people we took on board. Not even in the neighborhood of Christiania or in the rich Guldbrandsdal were the inhabitants so well-dressed, so prosperous (judging from outward signs, merely) , or so intelligent. They are in every respect more agreeable and promising specimens of humanity than their brothers of Southern Norway, [Pg 276] notwithstanding the dark and savage scenery amidst which their lot is cast. ”

“ If he had any suspicion of Durrance's visit, he gave no sign of it. He rang the bell, and tea was brought into the great hall where the portraits hung. He asked after this and that officer in the Soudan with whom he was acquainted, he discussed the iniquities of the War Office, and feared that the country was going to the deuce.
"Everything through ill-luck or bad management is going to the devil, sir," he exclaimed irritably. "Even you, Durrance, you are not the same man who walked with me on my terrace two years ago." ”

“ Miss Durrant was certainly showing William Henry Dennison something he had never seen before. He had always been apathetic towards young women, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could be got to attend tea-parties, or dances, or social gatherings, at all of which he invariably behaved like a bear who has got into a cage full of animals whom it does not like and cannot exterminate. But it became plain that he was beginning to cultivate the society of Miss Durrant. ”

“ Durrance rose with her. He was still not so much disheartened as conscious of a blunder. He had put his case badly; he should never have given her the opportunity to think that marriage would be an interruption of his career.
"We will say good-bye here," she said, "in the open. We shall be none the less good friends because three thousand miles hinder us from shaking hands."
They shook hands as she spoke.
"I shall be in England again in a year's time," said Durrance. "May I come back?"
Ethne's eyes and her smile consented. ”